South End Character Speaking Out On Neighborhood Change by Anne Alison Barnet

What is South End Character about?

I’ve been living in the South End, which is a downtown neighborhood of Boston, for 60 years. This neighborhood has changed a great deal over the years.

I came to Boston to go to BU (Boston University), and at the time they didn't have any room in the dorms. They sent me a list of approved housing and I chose the cheapest one. Not even knowing where it was. It was called the Franklin Square House, which I would eventually write about. It is only a couple of blocks away from where I live now; I've been here for a great number of years.

With somebody I knew I started a newspaper called The South End News in 1980. It was a great paper. We had all kinds of columns that covered current topics and real people in the area. After a while, I didn't get along well with the other owner. So, I opted out of the ownership of the paper, and I later started writing a column in the newspaper covering neighborhood stories and the people living there. I like writing about and talking to characters. Most of them nobody would know about anymore if I hadn't written about them.

What are some characters or stories that stand out?

At a local bookstore, a woman who works at the counter lives in the area, I said to her, “You should know about Viviana Munoz-Mendoza.” I printed the article about Viviana for her, which she liked a lot.

When we first started the South End News, Viviana was my first interview. This was a woman who lived a few blocks away from me and had been a renter for some time. Then the landlord came to her and said, “We're going to go condos. Condos have been a great success in Europe. where they had a housing need.” I think that's nonsense. This was at the beginning of the condo craze around 1980. Viviana was horrified and fought against it for two and a half years before she lost. She had all these signs in the windows saying, “Hell no, we won't go!” She had news media coming over where she'd be on the front steps. She was evicted after she lost the lawsuit, and she moved into my house.

She was quite a character. I liked her enormously. I often tell people about her because they don't remember. She has since died, not in Boston but in Puerto Rico. She was the daughter of the former governor of Puerto Rico, Luis Munoz-Mendoza.

Francena Roberson is another name that comes to mind. They always called her, the South End’s unofficial poet laureate. I loved her poems. She was something. One of my favorite stories about her was the time I went to hear her speak at BU. Afterward, I was walking down the street and I saw her ahead of me, so I caught up to her and said, “Francena, would you like to go out for a cup of coffee?” She stopped and stared at me and said, “How about a drink?” We went out for more than one drink. She's also no longer with us.

Here is one of her poems, Ode to the South End.

I put right in the front of the poems. “I got a feeling about you that I could not explain. The first time I walked on your streets in the rain. It was as if voices around me seemed to whisper, “Take care, you are about to start a lifelong, love affair.”

I can relate to that because when I came here, I too was about to start a lifelong love affair.

Why did you want to compile these articles into a book?

I thought they were good stories that anybody who lives here should be interested in.

I used to know everybody on this street, and everybody knew me. It was hard for me to walk down the block because everybody would call out to me and say hi. Now it's all completely different and the new people don't look at me or speak to me. It's very boring, and there's going to be more of that.

If I came to this street and I bought a condo, and someone said, “There's a woman over there who wrote books about The South End,” wouldn't you be interested? I don't think they are.

What has changed in the neighborhood?

The community has changed here so much. Whenever there's a community event, it's all white people and lots of children. On my street, I know there are little children, but you never see them. I don't think the parents let them go out, which is different from the past. I say white people because this neighborhood used to be largely racially mixed. Now there are hardly any African Americans.

There’s a lot of gentrification going on. Some houses, not on my street yet but it's going to happen, in the area has sold for six million dollars, and rent is $3,000 or more a month. Boy has that changed. I mean, when I came here, I paid $50 a month. When it went up to $60, I was very upset. My house was built in 1868. They're beautiful houses, most of them are row houses, so it's a very nice-looking neighborhood and lots of trees. Many of the buildings are now condos or people renting out the houses where the rent is very expensive. Rich people are drawn to it. We're right near a hospital. I think a lot of new people moving in are doctors or medical students. When the students graduate, they move on to somewhere else. A lot of people who buy the homes come in and gut the buildings. This kills me because they are already beautiful on the inside, they’re unique. When I have old friends come over to visit me, they say, “Wow, this is the old style.”

We also have a tremendous number of homeless people, which is a big issue that generated very little compassion. Most of these people have drug problems, which I can certainly understand.

Lately, police cars just sit in front of them and say to them, “Move on.” So, they move on to somewhere else, where the same thing happens where the same thing happens again. I wrote an article once about if I were to be homeless. I said, that even if I were out there for a day, I'd be searching for some drug or something to make me feel a little better. I see how fast it happens to people, where they become drug addicted and there's no help for them.

Last week I saw two fire trucks at my end of the street. I went outside because I thought there was a fire. There wasn't a fire, but a homeless man was sitting on the front steps. Did the EMS do anything for him? No. They pointed to the hospital and told him to go there. The guy was in bad shape too. We have a lot of people out here but nothing is being done to help them. It drives me nuts.

The person having issues has to say, “Yes, I want to go to the hospital.” but if they don't say that or can't say that then they get no help.

Homeless people used to be at the intersection of Mass Ave and Melnea Cass Boulevard, so it's called “Mass and Cass.” Even though they moved across the street. The mayor said she cleared it out by taking all the tents down. I’ve always said if I were out there the first thing I would do is get a tent. But now they're back, of course, the people and the tents.

Transportation has also gotten worse. I've never driven, so I take buses and they are so bad now. I write for a paper called the Fenway News, which is another neighborhood nearby. In that paper, I've been writing about how bad the bus service is.

I have no sympathy for the argument of the bus transportation being underfunded because half the time when we get on the bus we're waived in, we don't have to pay. I always mutter under my breath, “Oh, the MBTA doesn't need any money, everything's fine.” And it sure isn't. MBTA, (Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority) needs the money it’s very old and very corrupt. People get a lot of money for doing nothing. We have a new guy who's the head of the department, but I always said that he's going to slip out any day and go back to New York where he came from.

The bus system closes certain lines for track work and there's all kinds of “development work” always going on and it doesn't improve anything. They are also packed with people and a lot of them are homeless. They need the buses too.

Recently, they started this new payment plan that you can pay with a contactless device. You can get on and pay with a credit card, debit card, or your cell phone. I guess it's supposed to be more efficient or something. But everybody usually pays with what they call Charlie cards that you put money on and then you get on the bus where you tap it on the scanner. But now you can also use your cell phone as well. I don't understand how it works but now when I take the bus, they have an announcement telling travelers to use the new system but be careful not to pay twice. When people board the buses, I don't see anybody doing that or paying when they get on. I don't think they know about it.

The reason I take buses is because in this area we have no public transportation except buses.  We used to have an elevated train, which I loved really, it was so efficient. They tore that down back in the 80s and they put in this other system, called the Silver Line. It's not a line, it's a bus.

The only other transportation method we have is trolley lines, but they're often out of service and you don't know when they are or aren’t. I wanted to go on the green line today, and today they're out of order.

The other big change here is bike Lanes. Some people are very careful and respectful, and they stay in the lanes. But the majority are not. They're crazy! They're out here on skateboards, scooters, motorbikes, and delivery bikes. They're all over the place and very dangerous. I got hit by a bike while I was on the sidewalk, not the bike lane.

Just yesterday I was walking down Mass Ave and I saw a guy on a motorcycle crash into one of the posts that divide the bike lane from the street. He crashed right into it and fell off, but he seemed to be okay.

And they have these pedestrian walk signs. I think they should just tear them down. There's one down here that I go to all the time. When I've got the light, I start to walk and then cars are coming in on me, not just from one side but from two sides. It's wild. You have some cars that stop but others don’t.

When I first came here, I loved Boston. You know, I just thought everything went right but now everything's wrong. We have these brick sidewalks and I've tripped, everybody trips and falls. They're awful. And the streets are awful. It's not what it was.

We have mayors and whatnot who speak positively about things, but then they don't happen. People often ask, “Alison who's your city councilor?” and say, I don't know.

What has stayed the same in the neighborhood?

The way the buildings look, you can’t do anything to the facade of a building. They’re protected by landmarks and historical society. At least there's that and it looks pretty much like it always looked.